For scientific papers on AGW, record happenings in the Arctic and the Greenland, Himalayan and Antarctic icesheets. Also weatherstorms and higher than average rainfalls and other extreme weather events.

Melting permafrost in the Arctic is unlocking diseases and warping the landscape

But perhaps most disturbing are the changes occurring underground in the permafrost. Permafrost is a layer of frozen soil that covers 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere. It acts like a giant freezer, keeping microbes, carbon, and soil locked in place.

Now it’s melting. And things are getting weird and creepy: The ground warps, folds, and caves. Roadways built on top of permafrost have becoming wavy roller coasters through the tundra. Long-dormant microbes — some trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years — are beginning to wake up, releasing equally ancient C02, and could potentially come to infect humans with deadly diseases. And the retreating ice is exposing frozen plants that haven’t seen the sun in 45,000 years, as new radiocarbon dating research suggests.

Wiki said... Dormancy is a period in an organism's life cycle when growth, development, and (in animals) physical activity are temporarily stopped. This minimizes metabolic activity and therefore helps an organism to conserve energy. Dormancy tends to be closely associated with environmental conditions. Organisms can synchronize entry to a dormant phase with their environment through predictive or consequential means. Predictive dormancy occurs when an organism enters a dormant phase before the onset of adverse conditions. For example, photoperiod and decreasing temperature are used by many plants to predict the onset of winter. Consequential dormancy occurs when organisms enter a dormant phase after adverse conditions have arisen. This is commonly found in areas with an unpredictable climate. While very sudden changes in conditions may lead to a high mortality rate among animals relying on consequential dormancy, its use can be advantageous, as organisms remain active longer and are therefore able to make greater use of available resources.

Many bacteria can survive adverse conditions such as temperature, desiccation, and antibiotics by endospores, cysts, conidia or states of reduced metabolic activity lacking specialized cellular structures.[14] Up to 80% of the bacteria in samples from the wild appear to be metabolically inactive[15]—many of which can be resuscitated.[16] Such dormancy is responsible for the high diversity levels of most natural ecosystems.[17]

Dormancy is not relevant for viruses as they are not metabolically active themselves. Some viruses are physically stable and may remain infectious for long periods of time, such as poxviruses and picornaviruses. Some viruses may infect cells and then remain inactive for some time, for example herpesviruses.

I owned, with my then business partner, a villa in Pt Elliot. Front yard covered in thick cement, old cement. We jackhammered the cement up and took it to the tip. It rained. Flowers sprang up everywhere, flowers not weeds. That was seeds, dormant for like 50 years.

We also found lovely old (100 years old) paving bricks. To protect the walls instead of improving drainage previous owners just put down another layer of cement.

A deer died of anthrax in Siberia around the 1930s. Now AGW melted the deer’s carcase—some kids got anthrax.

Not all bacteria being freed by melting permafrost are harmful but some could well be. And we have no resistance to any harmful bug in the thawing tundra.

Could be fun times ahead.

Abbott & Co are going to cause the mother and father of all recessions—be prepared!

johnsmith wrote:i can understand something remaining dormant for a few years, even a few decades ..... but some of the stuff they're talking about is thousands of years old

i don't discount that it may be possible with a very small number of bacteria might be able to , but for the majority of things discussed in the article, I just don't see it

but what the fuck would I know, I don't even having a passing interest in biology

Well, I don’t agree with cloning wooly mammoths because it has to be done via a non mammoth.... that produces a weird animal that has no real evolutionary benefit or possibly even will be mal adapted, let alone deformed!

There has to be some sort of statute of limitations for sanity’s sake!